Sensei

Around the first of the new year, I will have a new book of poems out. They reflect the times, times when the political situations in the English-speaking world have seen rates of depression soaring and bank accounts collapsing, along--in so many cases--with hope.

This poem, however, has within it the seed of hope that transcends generations, I think. I hope so. 

Jimmy Donlon as a teenager, 1960s.

Sensei

It had been forty years or more
since I had seen Jimmy. Since
I was a pre-teen, he a wild
youth of 20 or so. Now,
he lay dying, in a hospital
two hours from my home.

His brother asked me to
drive him there. We all went,
my brother, too, and Jimmy's two
sisters. The five of us crowded
into the semi-private room.
Lord knows what the visitors
of the other dying man thought
of the Irish pub we
created, laughing and teasing
as we always had. Lord knows.

We took turns sitting in the
single chair next to the bed.
I shrank back, knowing my
turn would come, hoping that
it wouldn't. Could I do this?

Finally, Maureen got up and I
had no place else to go. I
gritted my teeth and sat.
"Hold my hand, please," Jimmy
said, and I died. I had to do this.

I held the talented, calloused hands of
a painter of walls--murals, faux
marbre and other old/modern
ways with walls.

A house painter, that's all Jimmy
was.

That's what Jimmy was.

A
good painter, a skilled one. Maybe
a great one. His assistant called him
sensei.

He died a few days later, before
we could come back on another
Saturday and liven up the world
of the dying with our antics, carried
over from childhood, depended
upon to take us through the good, the bad
and the in-between. It's what we
Irish do; we greet everything with humour,
before the tears and after.

Jimmy's sons' friends filled a church
for his service. A bitter wind chilled his
aged father at the grave site. A blast of
Irish humour filtered through three Irish
generations that filled the restaurant
after. The same old jokes, laughed at
over and over and over again. Known
even by his son who lived in Hong Kong.

But I, I had got more out of Jimmy's death
than the welcome reminder of a vibrant
family, targeting happiness even in grief.

I had held his hand. He gave me peace,
then, to go on. Did he know the fears I
suffered, the terror of gripping the last
living moments of a man I had known so
long ago, when we both were young? Yes,
I think he did. I think he held my hand not
for him but for me.

That's who he was, that house painter.
Sensei.

Copyright 2018, Laura Harrison McBride

Colonic irrigation for the soul

You may not have toxic colon. You may just have Trump or Brexit.

In case you haven't figured it out, I am a liberal. I believe ALL people deserve decent food, housing, clothing, education and a society peaceful enough for everyone to work on reaching his or her heart's desire.

I decry anyone who, for greed or sociopathology, interferes with that by being needlessly vicious or by electing sociopaths. So yes, the bogus president of the United States and the reprehensible, if not quite as bogus, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom meet the criteria.

So what? So how is a relatively balanced person supposed to create art when sociopathic kleptocrats are in charge of the two largest English-speaking nations on earth? They're filling society and our hearts and minds and even souls with a layer of anti-humane memes a mile thick, backed up by the threat of force. Troops to corral refuges in Texas; the threat of soldiers on British streets to stop citizens killing each other over a box of aspirin post-Brexit.

Our every waking moment, for slightly more than 2.5 years, has been blanketed with not a tissue of lies, but a mile-thick blanket of egregious untruths, in both nations. Blotus lies, according to those who have surveyed it, an average of 100 times a day. ONE HUNDRED LIES A DAY FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. That is a level Nixon could only dream about, and he was a criminal from his wing-tips to his thinning hair.

May doesn't lie as much, I think. She doesn't need to. Like a parrot who has had a stroke, she repeatedly parrots her single meme about leave meaning leave.  (Ah, yes, doctor, about that loss of cerebral function....) She is so totally incompetent that whatever she does or says is greeted with palpable disdain and disrespect by, I think, both Remainers and Leavers. The Leavers fear she will NOT ruin the nation as they desire so that they can feel better, tossers that they are, as the rest of us are forced to live like rats. Remainers are worried that she will ruin it so that we will be under siege not only from the envious Leaver rats whose own addlepated actions are sinking the ship, but from the petty criminals the rapidly declining society will spawn.

But this isn't a political blog; that would be McBride's Bar & Grill.

It's not a health blog, either.

So what's the title about, then, especially after the anti-fascist rant above?

It's about how we manage to get through it, how we remove the largest loads of crap the world has seen in a century, at least, from invading our sacred space, our artistic soul. Or how, if the walls have been breached, we can manage to shit the poison out, metaphorically speaking.



Shit it out, though, I think we must. Either that, or we'll find ourselves babbling in a corner about how cute Hallmark-style cards with little Kewpie dolls and cutesy saying on them really are. And god forbid, painting one.

So what to do?

ART

A relatively calm expression of the attitude that requires colonic cleansing. L. H. McBride, 2019 It is probably fit for the Museum of Bad Art; it was done in abut 4 minutes or less in the old Microsoft Paint program.

There have been, for some time now, art therapy courses for kids and adults suffering almost any kind of malady or disruption.

Aside from that, artists make are. Some artists, perhaps realist painters, might fling paint at a canvas to relieve their angst, and call the result abstract expressionism. Others would paint horrific faux-medieval tableaux of devils down the the tiniest detail.   

Writers can also turn their skill to tasks they don't ordinarily undertake with a view to relieving stress. Some, who might toil as poets by day, might write a dystopian novel. A journalist might write a play; a playwright might decide on a series of letters to the editor--journalism of sorts--to clear her artistic colon of accumulated bullshit.

I have been thinking for days of doing the paint slinging. But I'm too cheap to waste expensive oils. Watercolour wouldn't bring to the effort the gravitas it demands. The idea of writing a play or even a dystopian novel is daunting; I've got the second Shelf Barker mystery, Pool Full of Death, to complete sometime between now and Christmas; it's humorous, so I don't want to get a tragedian's mindset about it all at the moment.

A more distressed Paint effort in the colonic cleansing vein. L.H. McBride, 2019

Yes, the very thing: the old Microsoft Paint program. It's simple, vibrant--unless you do a lot of monkeying with the colours with various effects. If you do that, though, it won't be quick and won't get the foul meal of Republican or Tory force-feeding through your gullet and out the nether end, so to speak. So no, just Paint, alone.

Really getting the shit shifted now; no pretense at design. L. H. McBride, 2019

I did the three Paint works above while I was writing this.

And just now, my efforts opened me up to one I want to do. A cabbage. Just a cabbage. A cabbage somehow reminds me of that grand photo of 45IQ in an old-style clear plastic women's rain hat, the ones that tie under the chin. (Not high art, but high humour to be sure.)

If you're a writer with a colonic issue, I'd suggest you sign up for Comedywire; being forced to write funny one-liners about anything and everything is one way to force the Cheeto/Brexit bullshit out of your system for a while.

I go through Comedywire periods, but it as been a while. Sometimes the crap is so thick, you can't even shift it that far. But I just checked it. Top of page was a BBC report about Pilots Report IFOs off Irish Coast. The first quip I read was, "Where else would little green men be headed?"  You don't even have to be PC in your comments. And I'm fairly sure I've used the word Fuck on Comedywire and it got posted.

I became a member of Comedywire months and months ago, maybe years. It might have been when no one with a brain could imagine Cheeto could ever be elected. Maybe that long.

When I joined (one had to send a CV then, don't know about now), the founder let me join but asked me why I wanted to, as he could see that I was basically a journalist, and journalists aren't known for being witty, although I admit we are known for being PC, snarky and at times a bit darkly humorous. He was probably right to be a bit skeptical; there are times when the inundation of political bullshit these days is so deep, I can't even dream of making a funny remark. But if I force myself, it helps.

Or you could try the old standards: drinking and carousing.  Both are fun, and might clear the pipes pretty well. But you can't do them instantly; Paint and Comedywire, you can.



Plus, you can always drink and carouse later, when you feel better.

###

Copyright 2018, LH McBride

Stripping in the dark and other teenage tales

One of these got his revenge on me for about a dozen years after high school. Although I was a bit of a nerd, I was hoping to shake it off before I was 21.

Sometimes, when one is trying to think about one's life, life intervenes.

I had decided, finally, to write something, probably humorous, about this odd life of mine. The one in which I moved house 56 times between age 18 and now. In which I have experienced all natural disasters except avalanche. In which I was tossed off horses 27 times, only three of those events being life-threatening. In which I have been a freelancer for all but seven years between age 21 and now, but held at least 11 jobs. It's probably more, but those were top-of-mind, as we used to say in advertising. Oops, twelve jobs. I had forgotten the one as creative director of a horrid little ad agency.

But I can't think of all the incidents in my life that are worthy of ink. Especially humorous ink. And it has to be humorous, because if I dwell on the sad or scary things, I might cry or die. Besides which, it wouldn't be very entertaining.

At one point, I decided to just sit and sort of think about my life year by year and jot down any experiences that might be amusing to someone else. OK. Year 1. Nope, don't remember a thing. Year 2. Same. Year 3. Same. Year 4....and so on, right up until about age 12 or so. Maybe no one recalls those early years, but simply think they do. I might have thought that, too, except as a journalist, it quickly came to my attention that I was told the things I recall: I didn't flat out remember them at all.

Preteen pretense

The height of 1950s spring fashion, matching dress and coat.

So let's start with that twelfth year. 

It was Eastertime, and I was pumped up about having a swell new beige dress with white polka dots and a matching coat in beige with white polka dots on the lapels. AND I had a new hat, beige with flowers. All of the finery was on my grandmother's dining room table. And so was a packet of catsup. And my little brother.

I'm quite sure someone had told me to put the clothes away upstairs, but I hadn't. Before long, my brother climbed across the table. The catsup was under my hat, until it was ON my hat, squished and squirted as my brother--for reasons unknown to me--crawled across the table.

I can't recall whether my mother or grandmother bought me a new hat, although I suspect they did. But the experience of my first grown-up outfit had been ruined.

See? That's not a funny story. Actually, it's rather sad. But it came to mind. The funny ones come to mind when I'm chatting with someone. And I'm rarely chatting with someone while I'm sitting in front of my computer.

Still, I'll give it another go. Just one more, I promise.

Adore-able

Fast forward a couple of years. I was 14, and had the part of the princess Adora* in the high school play, performed publicly a few times but mainly put on for the grade schools, of Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp. I was SO proud. The female lead. Me, a beautiful princess, with beautiful costumes and a handsome prince. Indeed, the handsome prince really was handsome, and I quite fancied him. Slender, dark hair, flashing dark eyes. Al F. (no more ID,just in case) was half German and half Puerto Rican. And he could dance. I've never known anyone since who could dance like he did, and I love to dance. Anyway, we finally did start dating. That didn't last too long, but we remained friends until he graduated a year before me. A few years later, I ran into him in a movie theater lobby while my date bought snacks. He was an air traffic controller for the Air Force. I wonder if they'd have liked to know that, on the night of my senior prom, he came over for wee hours breakfast my father was making for my friends and I, and pulled my father out the back door to see the "spaceship" Al had seen when he walked through the woods to our house.

Rendering of Aladdin in a deep cave being "saved" by the evil magician in a printed version of the story, drawn by French artist Albert Robida.

But that's an aside. The real story is this....

So there we were, in the scene where the wicked wizard who has imprisoned Adora drinks the poison she gives him and jumps out the window. In one dress rehearsal, someone had parked a chair behind that window opening, and the actor--who, by the way, was a very unpopular fellow, a rather supercilious nerd with a nasty streak--gave his head a good crack on the way out. It's a wonder, really, that he didn't break his neck. And one must wonder whether, considering his popularity, one of the crew hadn't stupidly left the chair there on purpose.

So, there we were in our first performance for the entirety of one local elementary school. I didn't forget any lines: whew! The worst part of acting, memorizing lines. At length, we came to the denouement, without discernible flaws. There was no chair behind the window; the teacher had checked and given us the OK from the wings.

The wizard snarled at me, and I offered him his glass of poisoned wine, which was supposed to save me and Aladdin from his threats and spells. (In those pre-PC days, no one objected to kids in a play giving pretend wine to characters in a play, although I hate to think of the demonstrations that would go on these days.)




The wizard took the glass I gave him, quaffed it right down as I sipped coyly at my glass as a princess would...and the audience erupted in laughter and shouts of, "She drank the poison."

Well, I only got a little bit.

And my error could have been worse. I could "poisoned" myself in front of the high school or public audiences. But at least I learned a lesson: Check your props and make absolutely sure the ones you need have your initials or something on them. That sort of translates to the rest of life, actually.

It isn't particularly funny. But then, it doesn't end there.

Shelley Winters as Mrs. Van Daan in the film version of The Diary of Anne Frank.

I did do more acting in high school, notably playing Mrs.Van Daan in The Diary of Anne Frank, in which we all got to change costumes on stage.  It couldn't be helped. The set was huge and stuck right through the proscenium arch. No curtain. And it was a two-storey set, as well; no time to sprint to the dressing rooms. So the director/teacher decided lights off and we'd change costumes in the dark in full 'view' of the audience. We were hardly likely to grope each other, it being the 1960s. 

Still, it was a little titillating, especially for the geeky boy who played Mr. Van Daan and who, every time I visited my hometown where he worked in the deli until we were at least 30, would loudly say, regardless of how many bodies deep the deli counter queue was, "Remember the time we took off our clothes together in the dark?" 

Cripes.


* Adora, short for Badroulbador, was the original name of the character from a later version of 1001 Arabian Nights. Disney changed it to Jasmine.
  
Copyright 2018 by Laura Harrison McBride